Foreign languages are making a comeback in schools following government
reforms designed to downgrade “soft subjects”, it emerged today.

Four-in-10 secondary school in England are reporting a rise in the number of pupils taking French, German and Spanish at GCSE, figures show.

The move is being put down to the introduction of the English Baccalaureate – a new school leaving certificate that rewards students gaining good GCSEs in core academic disciplines.

Experts said the change was set to reverse almost a decade of declining interest in foreign languages, which are in huge demand among employers and leading universities.

According to figures, the number of pupils taking GCSEs in languages halved from 80 per cent to just 40 per cent between 2000 and 2011.

Baroness Coussins, chairman of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Modern Languages, said: “The appreciation and understanding of other languages opens doors to understanding other cultures, and if language take-up continues to decline, the UK could suffer serious commercial and cultural damages.”

CfBT Education Trust – a consultancy service – surveyed some 856 secondary schools as part of an annual report on the state of language teaching.

It found a huge gulf in standards between state and independent schools.

In state schools, just 23 per cent of heads made French, German, Spanish or other foreign languages a compulsory subject at GCSE level, compared with more than eight-in-10 private schools.

This follows a decision by Labour to make languages an optional subject in 2004.

But the study suggested that the English Baccalaureate, which rewards pupils gaining A* to C grades in English, maths, science, a foreign language and either history or geography, was starting to reverse the trend in state schools.

The new measure has been added to GCSE league tables - providing an incentive for schools to prioritise the disciplines over so-called "soft subjects" such as media studies, photography and drama.

Some 40 per cent of schools said the number of 14 and 15-year-olds taking foreign language GCSEs had increased this year as a direct result of the reforms. A further 14 per cent said changes were being made to languages provision “in the next couple of years”.

Kathryn Board, head of languages at CfBT said: “While the numbers of pupils taking a GCSE in a language is still declining, it is reassuring that the introduction of the English Baccalaureate appears to have helped improve the figures for the take-up of languages in many of our secondary schools.”